Personally I googled for RPG resources and "Strolen's" popped up. I browsed the site, noticed this crazy CaptainPenguin-guy and his cohort of Penguin associates and... logged off

The layout and design hit a soft spot though and I never forgot the name "Strolen's". Later I browsed dice roller's top 100 and sure, there, in the forums, was a guy calling himself "Strolen". I just had to go back to that place I never forgot and... well, now you are stuck with me

I found a small site that was open to ANYONE to add their ideas, which was quite different to the many closed clubs that were on the web. The quality of the posts varied, and I said to myself I could do this too. So I submitted a few things, became a member, exchanged a few ideas, and time went on. And the page slowly grew and people came.

'tis been quite some time ago that In first stumbbled into this citadel. To be sure it was the same place but the carpet was a little older and the door wasn't quite as shiny as it is now. It was a much different place.

I had been trolling the internet, looking for ideas and inspiration for my gaming and writing, going from one closed site to another. So many had crap content, and so many others were half dead and full of dead links. Then, perchance, I found the citadel in my lonely trodging.

There was this crazy penguin guy who had a rather disturbing looking blue pirate face icon and ranted about pop culture and shouted praise to Cthulu... It was like coming home. I lurked for a few days, reading the new posts, snooping around in the forum. Then I gathered the gumption to post, and submitted Horse Brass and several other horse based articles.

About a week or two after that I found the Greeting's Traveler section and decided to introduce myself. I ranted about Tennessee and ended up in a spat with Adel that the Captain put to an end.

That was some time ago, and though I've not talked to her in a while, Adel and I became friends and the Captain...well he's still the Captain.

Okay, I think it's halfway between the random URL/Google/Link Consortium. I THINK that I found it through a RPG reasource that I found by random URL after I got tired of looking through google for a good RPG site that wasn't half dead/dedicated to one system.

Logged

For the love of meat, shut up! No one wants to hear your emo character background! My hands are literally melting away, and I'm complaining less than you!—K'seliss, Goblins

Way back in WW-nam I was stationed in the European trenches with a couple hardcore gamers. One thing led to another and we created a great gaming group that could always evade our enemies in order to pull an all night gaming crusade. Soon the war ended and we started an educational kick and got away from gaming a bit. We still had night terrors of our gaming sessions so needed a way to express ourselves before we all developed phobias, as many did post-war/gaming. We still had ideas and we were all computer geeks so we organized some black-op meetings planning out our citadel strategy and what we would want in a gaming site. That same core idea has pretty much stuck through all the variations of the site. We just wanted a simple place to share ideas without being bogged down by rules, club membership, or specified specific specifications of specificity. A free flowing place to simply share roleplaying stuff.

It took me a good year or two to get it going and I turned into the primary (only) person able to spend time on the actual code, although ideas about it continued to bounce. It all came together in the Asian theater of war when I woke up at 0400 every morning and coded until I had to get ready for work around 0700. That is when I felt my first earthquake too incidently, a 7.something. So did that for a few months and V1.0 final was born. Through time and suggestions it got entirely out of control and unwieldy so V2.0 was created which turned into an even bigger monster that is even harder to control. After all that I still have a list of phobias that I am too phobic to list.

I was working 3rd shift, 2100 to 0530. Despite the Darwinian parade of people who come to my emergency room, I had free time. So I was checking RPG sites, picking up fonts, learning about writing, researching economic theory, and so on. What ever struck my fancy that night.

It was 3/17, St. Patrick's Day in the US, and I was looking for fonts. I found Strolen's old, old site. It had fonts and a little reference to gaming stuff. I followed the link to Strolen v1.0. It allowed me to endulge all my passions: gaming, writing, GMing, and world creation. Actually that is not completely true... intitially.

Actually originally, I saw the forum. People posed questions that nobody was answering. I answered them. I read ideas and added my thoughts to them. The next day, I composed and posted some other things (it was either Asylum or Dark Eye). The trend continued. I guess I have never left since then.

Try as I may, I cannot remember where I found Strolen's first. I believe I was on one of my RP searchings through the net, trying to find a good place to RP with others, and I came across it...However, I truly have no clue anymore; 6 or 7 months of imersion in a place will do that to you. Strolen's is just a part of my life that I can't imagine losing now that I'm a part of it.

I have no idea anymore how I got here.... It might have been www.gamewyrd.com where I found a link, but it might have been a random mix of about four or five other RPG sites that I frequented at the time.At any rate, I found something that I could use in my campaign the next week and so I dropped in here very regularly for some time.Then time, reality and life caught up with me..... Now I am the freak that still knows people like Ria Hawk and did not know that she went missing and is back again....

With kind regards,

Ylorea

Logged

______________________________________The answer is 42, but does anybody know the question?

Well, I found it the easy way - Ephe (who I'm at college with) told me about this great site where people posted cool RPG ideas that you could read. So, I lurked about for a couple of months before joining, reading all the posts (and at that time, there were few enough that I could read them all), watching the ultra-powerful munchkin items get slated, and then finally joined, posting my first submission in living fear of what Captain Penguin would say about it. Fortunately, he and others were approving, so I posted more and the rest is history. Every now and again real-life comes calling, or I get bored of role-play, or I get wrapped up in my own one and I leave for a few months, only to come back to find a host of new people posting, new submissions to read and that the people who were new-comers when I left are now well-established Strolenites!

I can't remember how I got here; I think I was following the link farm while I was trying to find some good quality free rpg stuff (although I may have been trying to find a replacement for FlatEarth). I do know that I lurked a little, reading some of the submissions... and I just kept coming back and then I joined. I periodically wander away, but I always wander back, so it's all good.

Well, I'm not sure exactly how I origonally found this site, but here goes -

When I first started to get interested in fantasy world-building (I have no idea how that got started, but now I can't imagine not doing it), and had gotten started on my fantasy world, I did tons of searches for any and all world-building sites on the net. Somewhere during that time, in which every appealing site was put into my favorites, I came across the Citadel. I have a brief and (very) foggy memory of thinking, hey, this is cool, but in my rush to get any and all information I could get my grubby hands on, it was left behind.

Almost a year later, after I had sated my thirst for resources, that memory came back. All I knew was that I really wanted to see that "Citadel" site again, 'cause I had a good feeling. Well, I had no idea what the name of the site was, but after clicking on every gosh-darned site in my favorites, I finally found it again.

This is where it gets wierd...

I'm just realizing this now, but even though I think that this all happened about a year ago, it only feels like I've been on the Citadel for a few months. Well, what I think happened was, I realized that instead of just reading submissions, I could add to the community by writing up plants and places and creatures and people that would be cool resources for other people to use, as well as things I could add on to my OWN world.

Well, I was looking at the... Mmm, I believe it's called "World of Evil" or something like that? It's a D20 site devoted to "evil" style items and plots and such.. And I went into a link farm, and there was one for "Strolen's Citadel", a free site, devoted to submissions... What really attracted me was that it was free and it was non-system.

Well, I was actually having trouble with Planet AD&D, getting into it and such, and found a like for a topic in a thread here on Strolen... well, I clicked the link and found LWW on here, so could say Google was the cause for me finding this, and seeing someone I used to know from PAD&D is the reason I signed up.

I blame MoonHunter--he should have been one of the poll options. I voted for the second choice, as MoonHunter could be considered "an online RPG resource." Originally, I first found this site via RPGGateway, saw the huge volume of material already available, and wished I had at least half of the time needed to peruse it all... still do. Later, at MH's suggestion, I returned here & simply dug-in to the older posts first.

I really don't remember how I got here. Probably was sitting in my dorm room being bored looking for freeform RP. Yes I, like Ria, used to be a member of flat earth. I still love looking back at the first freeform thread that I joined. My writing has gone downhill since then. http://www.strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,898.0.htmlI think it's Ria and Shadow's fault for getting me hooked on my first thread. I too disappear from time to time but I can't stay away forever.

So, I was running this poor player insane in game, right, and I had this whole elaborate story line laid out and all...but it sucked! I hadn't bought a book in years and never really used the internet for gaming at all. So I popped on-line and started going through the usual rings and game related forms, where I knew at least a few of my old players spent countless hours harassing new gamers for sport.

So I got into a chat with a few of them and after four hours of reminiscing (and a sound lashing from quite a few of them for the cruelty I had reigned upon them over the years) we got around to discussing story-lines and whatnot. Here I am, spending all my Saturday night, on-line chatting with a bunch of 30 year olds who still live with their mothers and playing D&D.

I finally got one of them (a rather rat-like vermin who loved trying to ruin all of my games) onto the subject of continuing sources outside of the "New Game Order" instituted by morons led by fools. (We aren't supposed to be game/system specific here, right?) They threw up like fifty links in the chat in a mere ten seconds. I was overwhelmed! I grabbed all of them and set upon my quest to find new and original game stuff.I was almost immediately underwhelmed. I found garbage...rehashed junk written by people who played only the NGO version of my favorite game. Somewhere in the list of useless links I found the Citadel. I looked for about two minutes, bookmarked it, and continued my long and fruitless journey.

Flash forward a year and a half...

So I was driving this player insane, right, and I had this great plan for a game...writer's block! I returned to my trusted computer (Eve) and started on my list of slightly filtered links to RPG info. Most of the sights were dead. I finally stumbled into the Citadel (remembering the name Strolen was tough, but my Google Fu is strong!).I got onto the page and read a title that caught my eye: http://www.strolen.com/content.php?node=3206 .

I joined shortly after (just so I could vote and comment really) and have been annoying everyone here ever since! So if there is blame to be given for me being here...it should squarely be placed on the shoulders of Wulf!

Logged

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." ~Henry L Mencken

I was originally looking for writing resources, actually. Mostly name generators and the like. I found that RP websites tended to have the best resource for the world I was creating, a rather generic high fantasy place. I think it was a link from Seventh Sanctum that actually took me to the Citadel. At first I was disappointed that there weren't any actual name generators, but I quickly took to the vast content available. I toyed with the idea of actually joining for some months. If memory serves, my first sub was in January of last year. I was afraid everyone would say it sucked, but it's actually been my highest rated sub yet. And now I stick around to join and disappear from forum games, interrupt deep conversations in the flash chat, and promise vast amounts of incredible content that take quintuple the time I had planned to post. And I wouldn't have it any other way.